Jef Nickerson
Oh right, this building was torn down this week. The above photo was emailed to us, the below photo was shared in our Flickr Group.
Photo (cc) provbenson2009
People are saying this is the former Bevo Nightclub but we’re pretty sure Bevo was in the brick building next to it. I don’t really think anything has been in the this building for a long time, it has been quite falling apart-ie for a while, then pieces of it were flying off during Hurricane Irene.
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I have to say, if there was ever a building featured on this page that really needed to be torn down, this was it.
Yeah, bevo (and some offices, at one time) were next door.
This was another bigger nightclub in the vein of Shooters or The Complex. I forget the name. I had a feeling it would be a victim of the 195 relo, and I’m surprised it lasted this long.
I was inside the building on Saturday and the place was amazing. An all steel skeleton with windows wrapping the entire structure. The bits that have been falling off all these years are the coverings put over the windows. There was a huge bar on the first floor with a DJ booth and enormous walk in cooler. The club that was last there only used a quarter of the space. The structure itself , uncovered, would have lasted forever. You surely will never see a building like that again.
Alex, I agree, there’s not much left to this building, it was a neat structure but there was nothing left really to renovate. What is disappointing is the extreme likeliness of it becoming a surface lot for the foreseeable future. In the Sim City version of Providence in my head this would be a very nice spot for a mid-rise residential tower.
Or, as Bill posted while I was posting, maybe there was something to save.
So I was too young growing up in RI to really enjoy any of the clubs in this area (I was born in 1980, and left for college in 1998 living back in RI only intermittently for two more years before leaving permanently). When did this area go into decline, and when did this type of club culture in Providence die? Is it dramatically more dead now than it was back then? What’s funny is I remember almost all of these places by name from ads on 92 Pro FM or from hearing my older cousins go, but I never got to see any of these places. Were any of them replaced with anything similar?
Hmm…this would need confirmation, but I heard James Hall of PPS say some time ago that this building WAS significant for being if not the earliest, certainly one of the earliest curtain-wall buildings in the country, but I don’t have the solid attribution on that (he may). I do hope somebody documented it before the teardown, as it was tremendously elegant, as such, if grossly abused and decayed. James did note, and this was a week or two before the whole thing went up for auction, that it was highly unlikely to be preserved and was probably beyond saving, regrettable as that was. I looked around it at the time, and it was pretty shot, but fascinating, and I can certainly imagine if that lovely glass box had been preserved with some kind of new self-supporting decked structre and maybe some big plants/a hothousey environment inside, perhaps a bit akin to the amazing marketplace/restaurant venue now in the Guastavino-vaulted space under the Queensboro/59th St. bridge…
Alas, but not surprising. Sigh.
I heard recently that a developer is looking at this site, along with the adjacent 195 parcel, in order to build a big-box store.
Providence Business News: Five Questions With: Richard Baccari II
His comments sound very positive. A mixed-use building would be perfect in this spot. Hopefully this comes to fruition soon.
Hopefully Chapel View is not his idea of “mixed use.” Parking came up at least twice in 5 questions as amenities he envisions for the area.
If I was to become famous enough to be on “Inside the Actor’s Studio”, “parking” would my answer to “What is your least favorite word?”.